Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

BOSTON

Hard rock band of the 1970s formed by Tom Scholz (b 10 March 1947, Toledo OH), guitar, keyboards, vocals. A Masters graduate of MIT, he played nights in bar bands, worked as product designer for Polaroid and dabbled in home recording; the result (later bootlegged as We Found It In The Trashcan, Honest) secured a contract with Epic, who promoted the band lineup with slogan 'Better music through science'. The sidemen were good enough to gild the lily: Bradley Delp (b 12 June 1951; d 9 March 2007), vocals; Sib Hashian (b 17 August 1947), drums; Barry Goudreau (b 29 November 1951), guitar; Fran Sheehan (b 26 March 1949), bass; all from Boston. First LP Boston (on which Hashian's predecessor Jim Masdea also appeared) was a remake of the demos, and the fastest-selling debut in pop history: it entered the Billboard chart 25 September 1976, reached no. 3 with top 40 singles 'More Than A Feeling', 'Long Time' and 'Peace Of Mind', indentified by ringing harmonies, twin lead guitars, and classy production by John Boylan: ideal driving music for the U.S. male's in-car cassette deck, it stayed in the chart for 132 weeks.

The album made no. 11 UK, 'Feeling' no. 22 regarded as heavy metal classic, but having vaulted from bars to stadiums they found success hard to follow: the less inspired sequel Don't Look Back '78 sold 3.5m to debut's 7.5m. After a tour all except Sheehan sessioned for Sammy Hagar; Goudreau made a solo LP for Portrait, formed pomp-rockers Orion the Hunter (an album '84); Scholz spent the early '80s working on Rockman, a device for obtaining overdriven guitar sound at low volumes for home recording. They were seen as a Polaroid band ('instant success soon fading'); then Third Stage '86 on MCA was a surprise hit with no. 1 single 'Amanda', Scholz and Delp still on board, Masdea returning on drums. Walk On '94 was the only album without Delp. A Greatest Hits came out '97 with three new songs; Corporate America 2002 had vocals by Delp, Fran Cosmo and Kimberley Dahme.

Delp's suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning was a terrible blow. Then Scholz and his wife heard Tommy DeCarlo, a 43-year-old credit manager in a Home Depot store, singing Boston songs with a karaoke track on a MySpace page, and he sounded so much like Delp they couldn't believe it at first. DeCarlo joined the band for a 2008 tour starting in March and for a new album mooted for 2009. Another newcomer was Michael Sweet, singer, guitarist and former frontman for the Christian metal band Stryper.